[JOHN DILES FITTING A COTTON BLOCK IN GRETCHEN HASSE’S LEFT EAR]

JOHN DILES: Good. Now, I wonder how much you can see with that camera. Do you see how far I’ve got that cotton down in her ear canal right there? When we build these in-ear monitors, we like them to get to about the second bend of the ear canal, so now our next step is to take --

GRETCHEN HASSE: The second bend of the ear canal, ladies and gentlemen.

JOHN DILES: [INDISCERNIBLE] In other words, the ear canals have two bends. In other words, they’re kind of divided into three different parts, so we’re going to fill up two thirds of your ear canal right now.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Two thirds of the ear canal, ladies and gentlemen.

JOHN DILES: Here we go. No screaming.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Okay.

JOHN DILES: This is extremely painful.

[JOHN DILES INJECTING SILICONE MATERIAL INTO GRETCHEN HASSE’S LEFT EAR CANAL]

JOHN DILES: She likes it.

[JOHN DILES INJECTING SILICONE MATERIAL INTO GRETCHEN HASSE’S LEFT EAR CANAL]

JOHN DILES: Now, this goop has to stay in your ear for 48 hours...

GRETCHEN HASSE: [LAUGHING]

JOHN DILES: ...before it sets up. No.

GRETCHEN HASSE: [LAUGHING]

JOHN DILES: It takes just about four minutes.

GRETCHEN HASSE: It’s kind of cold, and I can’t hear anything out of my left ear right now, but I guess that’s good. I guess this is what you want, right?

JOHN DILES: Yeah. That shows that we’ve got a pretty good seal in your ear and always, when we take that out of your ear, we will then inspect it and make sure that there’s not any voided areas that we didn’t get filled in, because --

GRETCHEN HASSE: Or not like a ton of wax hanging off the end of it.

JOHN DILES: You don’t want a ton of wax hanging off there.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Does it look very attractive? Is it very flattering to me?

JOHN DILES: Here’s what we’re looking -- Here’s what we’re going to do with that ear impression is that we’re going to send that off to a lab where they are going to make a custom in-ear speaker system that’s fitted to the ear like that and then it’ll come up over, but it’s just absolutely essential that we get every contour of your ear. This way, you can go jogging or anything that you want except swimming is not real good with this but you can jog or any kind of strenuous activity. That’s what a lot of performers that are really active on stage like to have. One other really good reason for wearing in-ear monitors.

GRETCHEN HASSE: So, how do people get these done? I’m just thinking online. So, how do we get the -- How do they get the -- How do we do this?

JOHN DILES: So, how do we get this done? Because I can’t -- I can come to your town and make you a set of these. No. We run the company from Northern California but we get inquiries from all over the world and say we got an inquiry from Bangor, Maine, we then have a database of audiologists, and some of them we’ve worked with already, and since we’re only eight months old, obviously we haven’t gotten to all of them, but there’s 10,000 audiologists in the United States so we have our choice of 10,000 different places to send folks out to. Worldwide, there’s probably 30,000 or 40,000 audiologists and so we’re then able to refer out to practices and we make sure that they’re nice, trained, safe places to go get this done, and this, you know, this is not brain surgery but it’s also you want somebody that really knows what they’re doing before you --

GRETCHEN HASSE: It’s not brain surgery but it is awful close to your brain. I’m just thinking this is kind of like when you send off -- What is it? The hippie shoes. You know what I’m talking about. Birkenstocks. So like when you go off and you put -- you send your footprint off. You know what I’m talking about?

JOHN DILES: I think yeah. They do that with ski boots a little bit, but we just feel that over time, you know, with huge explosive growth of personal wearable electronics that it’s just inevitable that people will some day be custom fitted. You could see down in the orders that we’ve gotten in today that the huge array of different ear shapes that are out there is just amazing, and so we don’t -- We’re not much advocates for one size fits all because there’s just simply no one earbud or earphone that will work for everybody. And we feel that sooner or later, the whole world needs to be custom fitted to their ears.

GRETCHEN HASSE: [LAUGHING] I certainly know for me, my earbuds fall out all the time so yeah, this might actually be kind of nice, so --

JOHN DILES: Yeah. If you think about it, you know, you’ve got a $400 iPod and plugged into a $3 earbud, we really think it’s the weakest link of that whole system, and so our strategy in developing this is let’s build really, really high and pro-audio-quality gear and make it affordable for consumers, and that’s what we’re up to, and one way that we prove our theory is by giving everybody a 30-day trial period, and they can take our Livewires, wear them for 30 days, and if they don’t like them, they’re more than welcome to send them back. And, you know, there’s always going to be 1% or 2% of folks that for some reason can’t get comfortable with them and we’d rather take them back and issue a refund rather than have somebody disgruntled out there and not like us, so. One other kind of interesting I know, Dancing with the Stars, you know that TV show?

GRETCHEN HASSE: Yeah.

JOHN DILES: We had the privilege last week of working on that set for fitting all the orchestra of Dancing with the Stars, and so one thing led to another. We were able to work with some of the performers on that, some heading out from here back out to Los Angeles, to deliver everybody’s ears, and we’re getting to work with this little Miley Cyrus. We think she’s going to be there so we’re going to hopefully get to make some ears on her, and that’s my daughter’s favorite person. She’s going to be Miley Cyrus for Halloween this year, so we’re looking forward to that.

GRETCHEN HASSE: So tell us. Is your daughter choosing the color on that one?

JOHN DILES: My daughter choosing the color for Miley’s ears? No, I don't know. No. She’s eight years old so she kind of chooses everything her way, and she’s pretty influential in my life, so.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Okay. So, am I about done now or?

JOHN DILES: Yeah. They’re done. Let’s take these out.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Okay. Go check it out.

JOHN DILES: Hopefully we can get this out of your ear.

[JOHN DILES REMOVING CAST FROM GRETCHEN HASSE’S LEFT EAR CANAL]

JOHN DILES: Don’t turn away from me. There we go. Now, we just twist it right out of your ear, and right there we’ve got just a nice ear impression that’s gone down one bend, two bends. That’s filled up two thirds of your ear right there, so we would send this off to a lab, also make one for the other side, then you’ve got a pair of custom-fitted in-ear phones.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Can we look at a finished piece?

JOHN DILES: Yeah. That’s the finished one right there, two little drivers then we’ve got a replaceable piece right here too. So, any other headphones that are out there, many of them, if the cable shorts out or gets clipped off, you’ve pretty much lost the whole product. With ours, we’ve designed it to be in component concept that every part of it is replaceable or repairable, and then you just plug it back in and go.

GRETCHEN HASSE: And you have color, you know? Okay, we have color choices as well, right?

JOHN DILES: We have all sorts of color choices. We got clear and...

GRETCHEN HASSE: Uh huh.

JOHN DILES: ...and beige --

GRETCHEN HASSE: I’m sorry.

JOHN DILES: We’ve got clear and beige and black and all sorts of -- and we’re working on doing some custom logos as well. We’re going to be doing Dallas Mavericks. We’re probably doing it this week and getting it ready for some potential marketing with the Mavericks, so.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Okay. All right. I feel a lot better about that now. This is Gretchen Hasse from Gearwire.Com. This is my ear, and this is John Diles and check them out. Livewires at Livewires.com.

JOHN DILES: Or you can edit out when she was screaming...,

GRETCHEN HASSE: [LAUGHING]

JOHN DILES: ...you know, and did you call the medics over here?

GRETCHEN HASSE: Yes. That leaves me fine. Brain surgery. No, and so it looks like --

JOHN DILES: There’s a hospital close by here.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Is it Livewires.com?

JOHN DILES: It is livewiresforyou.com, L-I-V-E-wires-F-O-R-Y-O-U dot com.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Okay. All right. Check it out, and stay tuned for more, probably not as interesting stuff from AES 2007.

JOHN DILES: Thank you, Gretchen. Thanks everybody.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Okay.